Archive for May, 2009

Reality is a sequence of events for which important figures have helped shape the future. What if major world changers were snuffed out before their big act? How many Alexander the Great’s didn’t get their chance on the stage and how many stages made an Alexander the Great when one was called for?

Consider a play. Romeo is a character in the play, so he’s always on stage. The person playing Romeo changes all the time. It doesn’t change the impact or idea of the tragedy. It’s just that who is playing Romeo doesn’t matter. All that was needed for Romeo to exist was the play. After that many men would do to fill the roll.

Consider our heroes, our founding fathers, and our Trumans. Our heroes are the ones who got us through troubled times. So any troubled time we’ve gotten beyond has it’s heroes right. A hero is defined in context to a circumstance. Without a circumstance, certain heroes simply won’t exist and certainly won’t be cast as heroes.

But what about all the roles that aren’t heroes. Or to put it differently, when we’re looking at the circumstances that make one person a hero, everyone else falls by the wayside as an extra or a non-entity at best. Well those are roles that often matter if you care about cars running, health care, and national defense. And yet, those are roles that from the vantage point of being a non-entity, we could easily imagine that if it wasn’t one soldier giving the ultimate sacrifice or one nurse injecting the needle, it would have been another. It doesn’t lower the cost… not at all; it’s just that the circumstance made the role and not the other way around.

From this proposition, if I don’t fill a role the circumstance demands, then someone else will. The circumstance makes the hero provided the conflict of the circumstance is resolved. If we all end up dead, in my thinking, it won’t matter to any of us and this becomes moot.

It may sound like nothing matters and that it’s all a big cosmic joke with us playing entities and non-entities that are a part of it all. And you’d be exactly right. We die anyway. Nothing looks as rosy from old age except the fact that old age gives us rose colored glasses . And that’s what I’m saying.

Do something with your life not because you know it will help the future. Do it because it defines your character in the present act in the one point of reality where you can be involved. The alternative is boredom. And ultimately it won’t matter anyway but while you have the presence to care about it, you will.

Sand falls through your fingers marking time in a granulated fashion by definition. The grains of the sands represent time, opportunity and fortune. The sands of the beach are brilliant moments of basic pleasure basking in the sun while reminding us that those moments are numbered. Whatever you can hold, can fall through your fingers. No. Not like water, sand is chaffing. In this way, sand has a mortality quality. Ultimately, the last sand will drop on everyone. Think of how many ways your life has been reset so far. Each reset can be seen as the completion of an hourglass marking the chapters you have lived through.

Sand is a filter. The water that runs through your fingers and through the sand becomes purified, scrubbed clean by the silicon chips that are the dirt of the beach. So while the sand falling through our fingers marks the inevitable turning of the wheel, when we fall through the sand, we return scoured and clean. In this way, sand is hopeful. Falling through sand is something of a trial by fire. You can be renewed.

A week of sand is a lot of hourglasses if I look back on all the roads I have taken to get to here. There’s always hope that some aspect of my life isn’t timed or limited, but looking back I fail to see an example of that. Every phase passes. I ebb and flow. But maybe, just maybe, a week of sand offers a fresh exfoliated opportunity at something built better. Maybe there is something enduring after all.

Don’t worry about me. I’m not sad or worried about it. I just wish I could see things clearly so that whatever drama could unfold, it won’t. Who needs that. Empires rise and empires fall. Some things are enduring. The rest is marked by sand in an hourglass. I enjoyed being in the sun. I think I could get used to it.

Neil Gaiman has a blog/site/thing that you can and should check out if you care at all about fantasy. You’ll be glad you did. I amuse myself by thinking that I could write him a question he might be entertained by. I further amuse myself by thinking you, the reader, will be entertained as well.

Mr Neil Gaiman,

I was wondering if you had thought much about having the questions asked of you printed in bold. I appreciate being able to distinguish your voice from the voices of others, but as you bold your text, the rest of the internet is slowly lightening in tone as if there is a finite amount of black that you are using up. I’m worried that since I have this idea for a website that involves a lot of black in the hopes of making a webpage as much a rockstar as I can possibly make it. Everyone looks there most rockstarish in black. Even you. Even Adam Lambert. Similarly, so would my website. Well, I’m worried that by the time I get there, the site will look sort of washed out.

See I don’t want you to stop answering the questions, I like your writing style even if you are just describing things that should be boring such as cities and graveyards. But selfishly, I’d hate for your use of black to overshadow the possibility that I myself might want it someday.

I’ve got a week of evil at the beach planned. Like a sandstorm we’ll bring ourselves like pox upon the unsuspecting residents and temporary workers of the Outer Banks. Like locusts, we’ll swarm consuming alcoholic beverages leaving kegs empty as the local alcoholic Irish population dehydrates. Vikings will not loot this week either because the mead makers will be running low do to my high level of consumption.

A week with evil and evil’s relatives. Idle hands are my playground and I intend to make my rounds. That’s how the Beast of Cville gets down. Sins like sands make a beach we can all sojourn to. Hopes like raindrops give rise to the typical humidity of the area. Plans like aspirations can only get you to the top of a hill before you tumble down the otherside due to whatever momentum you’ve brought with you. But standing on the apex is something to understand by being there. That apex is the next week.

I’ll be there, in the presence of Evil and her relatives basking. And as the wells run dry, the crime increases, and the panic sets in, I will finally get my relaxation.

You won’t read this because you’re hiding. You won’t know the inspiration because you haven’t heard much about my girlfriend and you haven’t kept up with Naruto, so you won’t understand where this is coming from. But I wrote this for you anyway, because an extreme idea deserves an extreme response. Life is a really simple set of trade-offs, there just happen to be a lot of them. And I offer you a very simple set of rules to navigate life with.

If thinking of me has caused you so much pain, stop thinking of me this instant. If the thought of a world without me does you harm, you must banish that idea as well. Do not let the thought of an old friend be the straw that breaks you. That thought is no friend of yours and what does that make me?

It must be disastrous to have had the perfect future slip through your hands. But it wasn’t for a moment perfect, and I don’t require perfection. I just want a simple thing called understanding. I’d like to be able to grow without the burden of constantly struggling against the expectations of the closest people to me. It’s pretty simple, but it has cost me a little bit. For example, I’m not really close to all that many people.

If you write the pros and cons down on a piece of paper, each with its own column, you will have missed my point. If you think a calculation just means add variables until the sides match, then we will have to disagree on the use of reason. And if I have to be troubled again to hear a new take of my life like I wasn’t there as present as I’ll ever be, then I’ll just vent again.

Because if thinking of you causes me pain, I’ll stop. I’ve got plenty of reasons to keep moving forward and I don’t need any of them. I would move forward anyway. That’s how I roll.